quiet sunday project

I had a very quiet Sunday and finally got around to a little project that was niggling at me.  As I just recently mentioned, that gaura this year is getting very lanky and covering the guem.

I've tried tying it back with string on a stake but it never lasts - the string moves and the stake leans.  So I got out the drill and put a few screws into the brick, which let me secure the string firmly into the wall.  As you can see, it pulled the gaura back into a more compact shape.  The geum actually gets a bit of sunlight now.  The lavender is leggy as it is every year but the daffodils have started to die back under them so it shouldn't matter.  It is satisfying to get little projects done.

finishing touches on the patio

I'd been slowly collecting plants for the patio but hadn't had the time to put them in ... then accidentally cut my finger in a kitchen incident and was told to keep out of the garden for a week!  Being told I couldn't cook, clean or type was one thing, but not gardening, how sad!

At last, though, I was able to get in there and finish up the plantings.  Along the back wall are two ginger lilies, I hope they grow up nice and tall by the end of the summer as we can see into our neighbour's driveway over that fence!  In front of the yuccas are those new cannas, still settling in.  In front of those are some annuals for quick colour - red salvias and some "sunpatiens": impatiens bred to tolerate the sun.  I really wanted a row of bergenias along the nearest bed but it's the wrong time of year to get them, so I may plant some more annuals there.

Here's a view right down the patio, including the two bangalow palms.  They seem to have adjusted well to life outside.  We had a lot of cloudy days so they were gradually introduced to direct sun, wind, and cool nights.  Their new growth is powering along, I just hope they don't outgrow their pots too quickly!

And just a reminder, here's what we had in this place before this transformation.  Those thick ficus trees and cumquats dominated and boxed in the space and felt a bit bland and formal.  Now when we sit on our couch on a warm, sunny evening I feel like we're living in a little slice of luxury!

cannas, cannas everywhere

I'm really starting to move forward on the new front garden bed.  I've got a birthday party on the 29th so I'm eager to get some plants in before then!

Here's a bit of a "before".  A palm in a pot will go where that cardboard is now (we've filled TWO council bins with cardboard from the furniture and there's still some left!).  At the moment we've just got the yuccas, the pond, and some dichondra at the front.

The plan is to pull out the two shabbiest hedges along the brick and grow some ginger lily.  I also want cannas in front of the yuccas and some bergenias along the bath about to where the pond is.  Finally I'll fill in with some annuals.  Lush, green and a bit tropical!

Cannas aren't in the shops just yet as they seem to wait until they're in bloom and beautiful.  So I ordered some from a canna website.  It also let me be really picky about what I got.  There are hundreds of varieties of cannas in short, medium, tall, with leaves that are green, red, or stripey and flowers that are pink, red, yellow, orange or spotted and either large or small in size.  So much choice!

I ordered five plants and they arrived in the mail yesterday.  So far when I've mail-ordered plants they sure tend to be generous - I count 8 rhizomes here!  Three of them were a bit small so perhaps they thought they should together count as one.

I dug a shallow trench in front of the yuccas, spaced the cannas out (not quite in a straight line, that was on purpose!) and filled them in with some horse manure to enrich the soil. 

Now it's pretty clear they won't be blooming before the party but I hope they at least settle in and put out some leaves for a bit of foliage.  The variety is called "copicana" (no, not tropicana!), about 1.5 metres tall with green leaves and elongated orange blossoms.  Hopefully they'll look like this!

step by step by patio

The patio's really starting to come together.  Last weekend's project was to fill in the strip below the mosaic, where I used to grow rosemary and sage.  It's only about 20cm wide but it means we can push the couch farther back.  We dug out the dirt, roots and bark, then lay down some edging along the back and sand over the dirt.  Then with the help of a spirit level and a mallet we lay out the stones.  Finally we swept some more sand between them.  Not a bad effort I reckon!

And even more exciting, we have our couch and chairs!  Of course the cats are already enjoying them too.

I also bought a pair of bangalow palms, one for either side of the couch.  I'm not sure how well they'll do outside so I'm going to introduce them a few hours at a time for the next fortnight.  They're meant to be pretty tough palms so I hope they don't mind a bit of wind and sun through the summer!

clearing the garden, clearing the mind

There's something therapeutic about clearing out a particularly weedy spot, just as it can feel therapeutic to clean the house.  I like the feeling of order afterward.  Remember this?

Well not long after taking that photo I lost my patience and went through like a crazy person.

Now when I walk down this path instead of feeling annoyed and stressed, I feel much more relaxed.  Not that I'll ever enjoy pulling weeds, just as I'll never really enjoy cleaning the house.  But it feels good to see a job finished.

pergola has landed!

The patio is really coming along now!  Remember it used to look like this:

Well this week the pergola went in!

Doesn't look like much at the moment since it's so empty.  But this is just the blank canvas.  Next we'll add some outdoor lighting so we can enjoy it at night.  Next we're getting some new outdoor furniture - some kind of lounge suit with a couch and chairs.  Somewhere during all of that I'll be putting in some new plants around it.  And all of that to get ready before summer!  Better get cracking!

autumn photos

I'm alive, I promise!

I was on a wonderful holiday in Turkey for two weeks; three weeks and 500 photos later, I'm only halfway through sorting them all!  So I've been neglecting both my garden and this blog.  Here's a bit of an update.

This autumn has been a real stunner in Melbourne, after a wet summer and a cold snap.  Unfortunately I missed the best of it, by the time I got back a lot of trees were just past their prime.  I missed my crepe myrtle's show entirely and after all the effort, missed the best weeks of my white anemones!  But my little maple put on a real show this year, it's the first autumn it's really shown off.

The time last year I was still referring to the poor thing as the "sad little maple" and it looked like this!

Big improvement, isn't it?  The oakleaf hydrangea is also looking very handsome, I reckon there's more red in the mix this year:

Compared to last year (the leaves did lose their green eventually but didn't gain the reddish hue):

I also had a little surprise come out of my giant elephant ear colocasia.  I've seen the flowers on my Amazon Queen colocasia before, but never seen them do this!  I'm not sure if it was just that the species type was more mature than my Amazon Queen or what, but it made a cheerful bright seed pod that looks a bit like an exploding triffid corn cob.

Finally, a quick snap of my lovely little colmanara hybrid orchid.  I took the advice of the grower I bought it from last year; when it finished flowering I put it outside on the porch.  It's grown several new pseudobulbs over the winter, and doesn't seem to mind the cold or the added sunlight from the low winter sun.  It's getting a few black spots that I hope are not mold!  No sign of new flower spikes though.  I wonder if I'll go to the orchid show again this year, and if I'll take home another orchid from this hybrid family.  The whole family seems to have drop-dead gorgeous flowers, and it seems to be pretty easy to care for.  But the real test will be whether I can get it to flower again!

That's all for now.  It's definitely winter now which in the garden is a time for reluctant maintenance in the cold. I've only got a few winter veg to look after this year so it's mostly a matter of raking up the rest of the leaves and getting through some major winter pruning tasks.  So you might not hear much from me for a little while, but I'm still here!

anemones at last

I decided a while back that one of my planned additions to the garden were white anemones (also called Japanese windflowers).  They're just so graceful and charming in the autumn garden after the heat of the summer has passed.  But I didn't realise just how hard that would be to achieve! 

Garden shops tend to sell plants like this when they're in flower so they're more appealing.  So as I saw the anemones flowering in my neighbours' gardens I starting asking about anemones in my local garden shop.  It took them a few weeks before they got them in ... and they were pink.  I've got nothing against pink flowers in general but to me, pink anemones just don't have the magic of the simple, clean white ones.  So I looked around at other garden shops.  Pink.  I checked back at the local.  Still pink.  Bunnings?  Pink.  I had a chat at my local and found out that they'd called every one of their suppliers, and only one had white anemones and they weren't yet big enough to sell!

So with atypical patience I asked them to put down my name and waited for my anemones to grow in some distant nursery somewhere.  Every weekend for about a month I'd stop by, just to check if they were in yet.  At last, just before Easter I got a message on my phone that started with "now don't fall out of your chair, but..."

At last they'd arrived!  As soon as I could I stopped by and sure enough, there were the little baby anemones.  And also some big, beautiful two-year-olds covered with perfect white flowers.  Now usually I'm patient enough to buy the small plant and wait a year for flowers, but not this time.  I'd waited long enough.  They weren't cheap, but they were mine!

Here's the "before" picture of where they went, in the back western bed. 

And here's the after - one on each side of the vitex bed (it's hard to see the one farther from the camera).  I took out a few more tufts of the liriope; it's a tough little plant and a good contrast but boring and worth sacrificing for these beauties.  Next year they'll grow even higher, their flower heads dancing in the breeze.

I'm really starting to be happy with this corner of the garden.  The vitex is growing incredibly quickly and the hydrangeas are powering along slowly but steadily.  The Japanese maple is doing so much better in its new home and the brunnera "jack frost" (just to the side of the nearer anemone) is happy too.  I'm amazed at how big the elephant ear colocasia has grown in that back corner, so it's obvious that the two small ones at the corner of the square bed are going to have to move soon.  And I've let some wild violets take seed behind the vitex to give the dichondra "silver falls" some competition.  The marigolds and ageratum will die down over the winter but they're still going strong for now.

Now I couldn't just let you go with only that distant view of the anemones, could I?  I've been playing with my new smartphone recently and having a ball with a camera program I downloaded that lets you set all kinds of old-fashioned filters on your photos.  So here's a whimsical photo of the anemones to finish on.  I hope it captures for you the beauty that attracted me to these simple, pure, white anemones.

finishing up the west beds

My goal during the Christmas break was to finish widening the west beds.  This was the last bit to go:

My husband was kind enough to supply some of the hard labour moving the rocks out of the way and into the giant pile of spares.  Although we overloaded my little hand-cart and when it rolled off a step it took a chunk out of one of the wheels. Now it sort of limps along.

Then of course I had to decide what to plant there.  In the long-term, I want the vitex in the large bed to grow wide enough to cast shade in that corner.  But in the short-term, the part closest to the camera is heavily shaded and the part farthest from the camera gets a fair bit of sun, making it hard to figure out what to plant across the two beds.  So I decided on an annual, the short-term solution.  It's called Ageratum "China blue", never grown it before but it looked cute in the picture. 
They're still just little seedlings, of course.

As a reminder, this is what it used to look like.

The geum is already starting to repeat-bloom, and I'm really happy with how everything's turning out so far!

geum

After thinking it over for what feels like forever, I finally got plants for the lavender bed.  It ended up being a spur-of-the-moment decision: I saw a little plant called geum "pink frills" at a nursery, liked them, and brought them home.  They have nice bright foliage and peachy-pink nodding flower heads.  I think they'll be a little tender to the hot sun but I'm hoping we'll continue to have a wet summer to help establish them in their new home.  I've dug in a good-sized bucket of compost around each one to help out, the soil otherwise was pure sand that had been under weed mat which meant it was very barren.

Here's the "before" brainstorming sketch for comparison.

Geum is meant to repeat-flower all the way to autumn.  I like the colour contrast with the lavender - both the flowers and the lime-green foliage.  And although you can't tell now, I'm hoping the tall gaura behind them will be another nice compliment with pale pinky-white flowers on long stems.

Here's a close up of the flowers.  Sweet, aren't they?

I just hope they like their new home!

Speaking of the rain, I probably should mention it's been raining A LOT.  We've had the wettest spring in years, which is a mixed blessing.  It's been warm, tropical rain from up north which is unusual for Melbourne.  At first the farmers were happy but now it's rained so much they can't even harvest their crops.  And in the garden, it's meant I've been bolder with planting new things in the summer which is usually a bad idea.  But I've also had some fungal problems - rust has removed almost every leaf from my geraniums so I've been using lime sulfur to save the new leaves coming in. Ah, the joys of unpredictable Melbourne weather!

a little hedge trimming

Along the back of the house runs a long bed.  It alternates between camellias and tall pine hedges.  The camellias have always struggled - they get shade all winter but sunburned in the summer.  Each year they seem to lose as many leaves as they put on, and most of the flowers get eaten by the possums.  Still, last autumn I replaced two that had died.  They're doing ok, but another one has died this summer.  I feel like I'm fighting a losing, uphill and expensive battle.

In the meantime I hate the pine bush on the end closest to the melons.  It shades the bed in the summer and because of it one of the melons never set fruit.  It's actually taller and thicker than in this photo but I'd already cut a chunk out of it before I thought to take a photo.

So I decided I was done mollycoddling precious camellias along.  The dead one is coming out and I'll try to transplant the other.  I'm slowly going to replace them all with agapanthus, a plant that's nearly indestructible in Melbourne.  I actually have a plant that's formed a cluster of 5 or 6 that I'll transplant. 

And though I'll keep two of the pines, the one on the end has seen its last days.

It was a lot easier to cut out than I thought, the wood is very soft.  I'll wait a few weeks for the next step; the agapanthus you could transplant in the middle of a heat wave but the camellias would appreciate cool weather.  It's starting to cool down for autumn but we could still have some high-30 weather before the end.

Speaking of autumn, you can just see the wilty pumpkin vine in the very corner.  It gave a very bad showing this year, only two tiny pumpkins and I'm a bit worried about them ripening before the vine fully carks it.  I did a lot better last year with the potimarrons but this year I planted them far too late.

And speaking of unsuccessful plants, I give up on chillies.  I've had grief germinating them, I've had them barely ripen before autumn, and this year I didn't get a single fruit.  Just a lot of flowers that dropped and a lot of leaves that fell off.

the scourge of mint and parsley

I've been very hit and miss with fruits and vegetables in my garden. My designer twig is at least a year away from fruiting. My plum tree isn't actually very tasty. I've hat potatoes rot, tomatoes wilt and peas fizzle. But my herbs have been loyally chugging along, requiring little and giving a lot.

There simply is no substitute for fresh herbs, and nothing like being able to snip a bit from your own garden instead of paying for a massive bunch from the shops. I've got sage, oregano, fennel, chives and spring onions as well as two types (each) of rosemary, thyme, basil and parsley.

I probably use the most parsley and mint so I go out of my way to keep them happy. The twin scourges of my mint patch are the catnip and caterpillars. Last year I planted a little seedling of catnip in front of my mint bed. It grew like crazy and it's heavily crowding out my mint. I tried chopping it back and it just grew back twice as big. Much as it amuses me to see my cats occasionally roll around in it, it had to go.

This photo gives you an idea of how huge it had gotten. It hardly fit in my compost bin even after chopping it up.

The other scourge, caterpillars, is shared with the parsley. The little green buggers are impossible to see until you go to snip some parsley or mint and you see all the nibble marks (for the record, caterpillars do seem to leave curly-leaf parsley alone but I prefer the flatleaf). The last few times I went to get mint I could hardly find it among the catnip and what I could find was decimated by caterpillars. I've also decided to plant some extra parsley where the catnip used to be. It does OK in pots, but parsley has a pretty long tap root so they're always a bit stunted in pots. But with plans to grow all that caterpillar food together I decided I needed to try some sneaky tactics to keep them safe.

What tactic you ask? Butterfly scarecrows, idea courtesy of the Garden Express forum - butterfly scarecrows. You cut the shape of a butterfly out of a white plastic plate, punch a little hole, and tie it to a twig. The theory is that when another butterfly visits it'll see the fake butterfly and think "no point laying eggs there, it's already been claimed."

They've certainly fooled the cats. No sooner had I set them up that they did their best to eat them. Do you like how much they flutter in the breeze? Surely this will work. I hope.
In any case, that patch now looks incredibly bare. I ruthlessly cut back the mint, no point in keeping all of that shredded and nibbled foliage. And I'll be planting parsley along the front soon. So hopefully in a few weeks it'll be a thriving herb patch thick with mint and parsley!

back corner and veggies

The back corner garden is also coming into its own.  This is what it looked ago about 18 months ago, not long after I moved here.  Pretty desolate place innit.

This is what it looks like today.  Marigolds and nasturtium, perennial statice, and the dichondra "silver falls" is really coming along.  I planted it hoping it would drape over the brick to shade it a bit and keep the roots of the oak-leaf hydrangea from getting too hot.

The melons back there are coming along well, you can just see the Minnesota midget is starting to grab onto the wall.  The watermelon in the tub is doing ok too and the pumpkin is now covered with both male and female flowers.

Unfortunately despite some hand-pollination it doesn't look like any of the female babies have set.  Something I learned last year is that if the pollination "takes", the pistil (the female part of the flower) sticks to the fruit as it first starts to swell and grow.  These ones, as you can see, have a flat end because the pistils fell straight off.  I could be wrong but I'm pretty sure this means they didn't pollinate.  No worries, it's still a small vine, it's got plenty of growing to do.

And although these are on the front porch, not the back corner, I wanted to update you on the tomatoes.  I've not eaten 3 or 4 of my lovely little Tommy Toe tomatoes and eagerly awaiting the first rouge de marmande ripening.  I took a photo to show you why I'm impatient.  They've reached a lovely size and may be still growing.  Most of the bunches are quite full, one of the clusters in this photos has 6 of these puppies all squeezed together! 

When will you be ripe!!?

Unfortunately I lost a full set of RdM blossoms before I realised they weren't getting enough water.  So there's one "layer" of almost-ripe fruit, one empty layer of no fruit where all the blossoms dropped, and finally a new layer where it seems the fruit has properly set.  The Tommy Toes didn't have this problem, they kept powering along all the while.